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Bring Back Board Games

I LOVE board games. I get aggressive, grumpy and bossy (but I NEVER cheat, despite what my family say). A couple of years ago I found this beauty of a board game on Ebay, NORTH SEA OIL (I think it is from the 70s). I bought it for my boyfriend (who works in the oil industry) -

It is FANTASTIC. It's like oil Monopoly. It has mini oil rigs and real life oil situations (bad weather = no oil production).

Board games have always been 'big' in my family... we have this one 'ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ'.. for a million years, although we have no idea how to play it. Our Monopoly board was bought by my Grandma when she was a teenager (she likes to tell us every time we play) with real metal pieces...

I usually buy a board game for Christmas, the weirder the better.. here are some suggestions from the lovely people on my Twitter feed. They all look FAB.

LOOPING LOUIE - some kind of crazy German game where you fly 'Louie' round a crazy obstacle course... (@sulsatweets)

UCKERS - Like 'Combat Ludo' - (@mrtotes)

THE GRAPE - You are your own wine grower (what's not to love!?) Even has it's own Facebook page (although only 5 'likes') (@don_frank)

DUNGEON QUEST, with a very reassuring 15% survival rate... (@Astronick)

SETTLERS OF CATAN Comes with high praise from @hollyjunesmith and @anclag !

Board games can be great fun (and can be very cheap).. Just get on ebay, type in 'board game' and hit 'ending soonest'. The weirder, the better.

Comments

Woo, I love boardgames too! We have a load of random games from the 70s, as well as French Monopoly which is hilarious as you argue over translations of Community Chest cards!

If you want a brilliant family game check out Survive! where everyone is trying to escape from a sinking island by rowing tiny boats through shark-infested waters.

For lots of good boardgaming stuff check out Shut Up & Sit Down (www.shutupshow.com) and the irregular board gaming column Cardboard Children on Rock, Paper Shotgun (www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/cardboard-children).

I used to love board games, and we had quite a few of them, but I ended up playing most of them on my own because my sister was such a big cheating bastard and mum could never remember the rules.

You might want to watch/read shut up and sit down - a thing by two very clever personages who know lots of things about games. They write words down, and then say them to a camera and make it go on the internet. There's probably a name for that. It's here:

One of the best New Years' of my life was spent in with friends, drinking wine and playing a game called something like "Animals on the Underground" (or "Magic Pigeon" as a pleasing synechdoche). The story is that all the animals from London ZOo have espcaped, and the players - as zoo keepers - have to travel round the tube map collecting back up their errant wards, all aided by the aforementioned mystical flying vermin. It's cracking. Can't find it on the interwebs though :(

I remember Escape from Colditz! What a blast from the past. I also remember in the dim and distant past a space age game where the board was just a starfield and you moved around with a horse-shoe shaped scoop thing picking up pegs! Can't for the life of me remember the name, and google isn't helping.

For more modern entertainment I thoroughly recommend The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game. Hours of fun making your friends horse fall at hedges, and then stealing all their winnings at the end of a race!

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